Friday, May 27, 2005

For everyone going around blaming Newsweek for all those deaths during riots in Afghanistan after the Quran-flushing piece, Joseph Farah, who writes the G2 Bulletin for WorldNetDaily, asks "where's the proof?" and points a finger at the lazy news media that told a story they did not know to be true:

Virtually every major news agency in the world has reported without verification that between 15 and 18 Afghanis were killed in the riots.

There's just one problem. There is no more evidence for these deaths than there is that a U.S. interrogator flushed a Quran down the toilet.

Not a single name of even one victim has been released. No details of the circumstances of the riots were released from any official sources – either U.S. or Afghan.

Who were these victims? Were they rioters killed by police or military forces? Were they innocent victims attacked by fanatics? Were they Afghanis? Were they relief workers?

G2B has examined every English-language news story about these deaths through Lexis Nexis. G2B has scoured the Internet, including foreign and non-English-language news sources for any details of these deaths. And G2B has queried both U.S. and Afghan official sources for any details about these alleged deaths.

No U.S. officials contacted can provide any corroboration for any deaths. And Afghan officials uniformly clam up with apprehension at the mere asking of questions.